Letters Unsent and Pressed Rose Petals
by ToastWeaselofDOOM
Summary: Rose, for several months, really did believe that Eddie was going to write. [Movie-sical. K for mentions of death.]


**A/N:** Dogfight is my guilty little musical love. I have a love for historical musicals, like Dogfight (and Chess). I also have a soft spot for wartime love stories, of which Dogfight fits in.

SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE AND THE MUSICAL!

So here this is. Set in the three years between when Eddie leaves and Eddie comes back from Vietnam. It's musical AND movie so...moviesical? I dunno.

Enjoy, guys!

* * *

Rose, for several months, really did believe that Eddie was going to write. He'd practically promised. He'd kissed her goodbye and tucked the hastily scribbled address into the pocket of his fatigues before heading for base.

She wondered what the letters would say. She wondered if she'd get to hear about his base camp, and the war, and his friends. She hoped he didn't write about the blood and the gore. She wondered what his handwriting looked like—she imagined it was kind of messy, like him. She hoped it would be legible.

Rose wondered what she'd write back. What would he like to hear about? Her music, probably. Maybe stories from the diner. Her life, the goings on back at home. Maybe he'd like a picture of her—she should have thought about that before he left! She'd have to get one for him and send it in one of her letters.

She could not wait until the mail carrier handed her that first envelope with her name and address scribbled across the front.

* * *

After the first month and no letter came, she was certain the absence of the letter was that he simply was getting settled into Vietnam. She waited on the stoop of the diner for the carrier every day—and every day, he shook his head.

"No letter for you today, Miss Fenny. Maybe tomorrow. "

* * *

After the second month, she convinced herself it was just lost in the mail. It was a long way from Vietnam to San Francisco, after all. It would come. It had to.

But it didn't.

* * *

After three months went by, Rose wondered what had happened to him. Every night she heard of more and more soldiers dying and she tried hard not to think of Eddie, with his dopey smile and strong back, lying dead in a field somewhere, or in a field hospital, or being lowered into the ground in a pine box….

But as the months ticked by and still there was no word, Rose could not make any more excuses or push off the inevitable thoughts that crept into her consciousness. Death toles were rising, and the war was getting bloodier as the days went on.

She dreaded listening to the news, because every night they told the death count, and every night she pictured his face ashen and bloody. Whenever she saw the mail carrier coming up the street the little pit of dread grew in her stomach. Whenever she looked at the rose petals she'd pressed between wax paper her heart ached and her eyes filled with tears.

Eddie wasn't going to write.

After all this time with no contact, she was certain Eddie wasn't going to be coming back.

* * *

She wrote him letters. She did not know why. Perhaps it was her way of mourning.

So she wrote him letters. Letters for a soldier that would never come home. The words came to her on breaks, during her shift, alone in her room at night—they were scribbled on old napkins and in the margins of receipts and occasionally on lined paper, when she had it on hand. Full letters and small letters, detailing life and lies, the plots of the new Twilight Zones, lyrics to her new song, recipes she would share with him when he came home (even though he wasn't). They all were scribbled down and put a small wooden one she'd gotten for Christmas when she was little. The papers nestled in with the pressed petals of the rose he'd gotten for her as an apology, so her room smelled of pine and paper and rose whenever she opened it to add another.

A rose for a rose, he'd said, she remembered as she fingered one of the petals.

She'd give all of the roses to see him once more, even if it was just the polished granite of a headstone.

* * *

A year passed, then two, then three.

Rose eventually stopped writing letters. Her mother passed the diner on to her, and she started growing out her hair. She rememred mentioning to Eddie how when she grew her hair out she's perform on stage for someone. She wondered idly, on occasion, as she pulled her long hair back before opening the shop, what Eddie would have thought of her hair.

But Rose did not have time to entertain the ghost of her long-dead Marine. She had a diner to run and a mother to take care of. Her memories of that night, that one night of turbulent emotions intertwined with racing heartbeats and awkward touches— twelve hours of heaven and hell, when her world had been turned upside and made perfect again were shoved to the back of her mind.

But life, as Rose had discovered, went on. One perfect night spanned on either side of many years of dull ones tends to become more fantasy than reality.

Rose, like life, eventually moved on.

* * *

''Nother buncha baby killers shipped back today," one of Rose's regulars said as he sat at her counter, swilling coffee before heading in for the night shift at the local waterfront factories.

"How manya 'em were'n boxes?" another worker from down the counter asked snidely.

"Not enough."

Rose frowned and put down her rag with which she was whipping down the black enamel countertop. "Enough of that! If you want to talk like that you can go someplace else."

The men had good enough graces to dip their heads in shame.

"Sorry, Miss Rose. Didna mean it like that."

Rose sniffed and picked up her rag again. "Closing time, anyway. Hurry up and finish your coffee or you'll be late to your works."

Rose's diner closed just before the night shift of the local factories started up. Lots of men stopped in for 'the best cuppa joe this side o' the Bay' before heading off to work. Rose was not about to turn away that kind of business.

"Yes, Miss Rose." The two men finished their coffee and stood up, tipping their caps to her. "You hava good night, now."

"You, too."

The men filed out and Rose went to flip the sign on the door. She turned on the radio above the bar and filled the sugar containers and wiped down the counter while listening to the news. Fifty-seven soldiers had died that day, bringing the total number of deceased that week to four hundred eight three. That number was higher than normal thanks to the recent and ongoing attempt to blast through the Viet Cong and open up a route into Saigon from the North.

Rose shook her head. She hoped the war would end soon. She hated hearing the death tolls each night.

She swept and mopped and took out the trash, as she had every night for the past fifteen years of her life. But it was as she went to do the final lock up and draw the shades over the front windows that she stopped.

A man stood outside the diner, dressed in soldier fatigues, staring at the entrance.

It took her a moment to place him, but once she looked past the haggard expression and the haunted, sunken eyes, it became all too clear who the man was.

* * *

_ "…Eddie?"_

_"Hi, Rose…."_

* * *

_**The End**_

* * *

A/N: Did you like it? Should I write more? Let me know, please!


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